Trekkie in Training: So What on Enterprise Do I Need to Watch?

That’s a tough one to answer. The original series really does take a certain amount of historical perspective at this point. Enterprise: The Next Generation is probably the best of the incarnations on TV. But I would hesitate to tell you to just start watching that because it took a while for everything to start clicking smoothly. Fortunately, relative to later series, The Next Generation episodes are comparatively standalone so you can jump in later without being lost.

The second movie (Wrath of Khan) would probably get my vote as the next thing to try. It works pretty well standalone although, ideally, you’d watch the episode Space Seed from the original series to see the events that this movie jumps off from–it’s one of the better original series episodes in any case.

Voyage Home is a lighter film. Undiscovered Country and First Contact are also worth watching.

Watch all of TOS, all of TNG and all of DS9. Also movies 2, 6 and 8. Then stop. If you must, watch Voyager and Enterprise.

Specific episodes:

TOS: Space Seed, Amok Time, City on the Edge of Forever, For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky.

TNG: Any of the Borg episodes. Also Darmok, my favorite episode. Also Relics is great.

DS9: All of it. ALL OF IT. Especially the last three seasons.

For TOS (The Original Series) you could probably skip the third season.

Also in TOS, you want to watch The Devil in the Dark; Balance of Terror; Amok Time; and Mirror, Mirror.

Hmmm… Difficult choice. There’s so much Star Trek material! I can’t say I’ve seen it all but I think I’ve know enough of the Star Trek universe by watching some of the first generation movies (you know, the ones with William Shatner) and almost all of the next generation movies (with Patrick Stewart). With these you might not know everything there is to know about Star Trek, but you’ll know the basics. I wasn’t much of a trekky myself but I’ve come to like Star trek because of these movies especially the “Star Trek: generations” and “Star Trek: First contact” movies. Live long and prosper!

@loonyboi: Once when a friend was going through a stretch of dating difficulty, he announced that he was in Pon Farr. We all LOLed for a long time.

I would watch the first year of TOS and the first year of TNG. The movies 2 and 4. I understand that this leaves out a lot of really good stuff but this will give you the basic introduction to characters and memes of the Star Trek universe. From this point you can pick choose what you like like. I didn’t like TNG much, but I loved DS9 and despised Voyager.

Well, this is really tough, because anything after TOS is going to assume you already know most everything about the backstory of the federation.

A lot of hardcore Trekkies may disagree with me here, but as a hardened Trekkie who has seen every episode of every show multiple times, I would actually recommend you start with…

ENTERPRISE.

I know. Blasphemy. But why? Three reasons:

1) Enterprise assumes nothing of the audience. Someone who has no idea what a Klingon or a Romulan is will have no problem connecting to the characters and the story.

2) Enterprise fills in a lot of the unexplained gaps for hardcore Trekkies, and it’s a great place to start. Why were the Klingons in TOS green humans, and then in TNG they were brown, ridged creatures? How did the Federation get its beginnings? Enterprise, in my opinion, weaves a lot of the missing pieces together quite well.

3) It’s the most modern of the franchises. Your first experience to Star Trek was the reboot, which was geared towards modern, Avatar-loving audiences. It had nothing intellectual about it. What we love so much about Star Trek is its exploration of humanity in space, and Enterprise balances those themes with relatively modern special effects, competent acting, and interesting stories.

Like I said, Star Trek 2009 and the shows are 2 completely different experiences entirely. Wherever you start, you’re going to need a lot of patience. It’s going to take more than a month to get into it. Good luck!

Wow, you guys are great. Thank you. Also, meep.

Zach, you beat me to it — I think it sounds like Allie will really like Enterprise based on what she enjoyed about the movie, as it is particularly linked to an imaginary Earth that is not that different from our own. Plus, as you suggest, it provides a good launching pad to build from (though I don’t think the typical new viewer is going to care as much about the continuity gaps as the long-term fans).

Enterprise? Really? Come on guys, all they ever did on that show was eat and talk… My friends stuck their kid in front of it to knock her out for the night…

Allie, you will quickly learn that Trek fans have varying tastes. I grew up w/the original and NG series so it’s damn near impossible for me to be objective. Star Trek wasn’t just entertainment for my family it was a ritual equal to church on Sunday!

I have fond memories of watching both TOS & NG w/my folks and discussing the *ideas* presented. I recently re-watched TOS and was surprised to discover that I still enjoyed it- though for me it was an equal amount of nostalgia as entertainment. Though I’ve not seen NG since I was a young teen, I can still quote favorite episodes and remember discussing the episodes with my family and friends.

All I can say is it might be hard to watch all that Trek in a bubble, find a friend or two to share the experience with and keep us posted. I look forward to hearing your take on it all.

Oh. And for the love of Mike, skip Star Trek 5. Just trust me on this one. It’s BAD. Really.

@dawnschilde

First of all, I have to disagree with you that Enterprise is boring. From a non-trekkie perspective, Enterprise is the least “boring” out of all of them, and it’s exactly why I recommended Allie start with it.

Like you, I grew up on TOS and TNG, and there were some episodes of TNG where all they did was discuss ethics and philosophy, and while it is entirely engaging in its own way, you have to realize that we’re talking about a young woman who’s first Star Trek experience was the new movie. I mean no offense to Allie, but if she were to start with TOS or TNG, I’m almost positive she’d find them confusing and boring. You have to have either been born into a Trekkie family like us and get filled in from our parents, or start from the beginning.

Scott Bakula and the rest are a good first Enterprise cast, and it’s a great place to start. There’s plenty of action and tons of sci-fi goodness.

It’s either that, or I would recommend you do some EXTENSIVE Wikipedia researching before jumping into TNG or TOS.

Also, just for clarification, Enterprise is in no way my favorite of the 5 series. I just personally think that for someone who is interested but has no background in Trek, it would logically be the best place to start.

If you were a fan of the latest movie, then the later series are going to please you more than the earlier ones. I jumped in and started with Voyager when I was younger and it has always had one of the most compelling stories to me, but its very separated from earth. Basic plot line is that a ship gets sucked into a wormhole and ends up on the otherside of the galaxy. The series is all about getting back to earth.

Enterprise, as a series was never finished and they tried to make it a temporal (time travel) version of Star Trek, but it came of flaky. Its hard to recommend, but it at least is the story of the first Enterprise, and given that its easy to jump into with out knowing much.

The next generation is perhaps the best series, but its slower and not much like the movie you watched. It holds true to being mostly about diplomatic & science missions. There’s not a lot of crazy action like there was in the movie. You’re more likely to find action in Enterprise or Voyager.

The movies I’ve only seen a few of, they are interesting, but nearly everything before this latest one was an “idea” movie more than an “action” movie. First Contact is the other one I’ve seen that I liked, and its got Borg in it…

Deep Space Nine is a kind of soap opera in space, they all are, but this one especially. There isn’t any real action until you get into the later seasons, then it picks up. The characters are cool.

I have to say though, the latest movie is sort of an anomaly when it comes to trek content. Perhaps the reboot will lead to new and better content, but I wouldn’t fish around too much in the past if you are expecting a repeat, but there is much in there that’s worth watching. I’ll leave it to others to recommend individual episodes, I never knew enough to do that even though I’ve probably seen most of them by now.

I know you’ve been overloaded by suggestions on every side, but I’ve got some of my own, if you don’t mind.

Original Series: “Balance of Terror,” “Arena,” and “City on the Edge of Forever” are all good if you’re looking for well-written episodes. “Amok Time” is very good, and “Mirror, Mirror” is required watching, because this episode is the entire reason evil people where goatees. (No, seriously.) “A Piece of the Action,” in which there is a heck of a lot of Kirk and Spock in fedoras on a 1920s mobsters planet, is great fun, as is “The Trouble With Tribbles,” which is the most famous episode.

Movies: Watch 2 through 4 back to back. 8 (which is a Next Generation one) is all right, but not required.

Next Generation: The 5th season is the strongest, to my mind. “Darmok,” “Hero Worship,” “The First Duty” and “The Inner Light are all from that season and are personal favorites. But if you watch nothing else, watch both parts of “The Best of Both Worlds.” Also recommended is any episode with Q in it, since he is epic. “Elementary, Dear Data” is what it sounds like: Sherlock Holmes meets Star Trek, and terrific fun.

Can’t really remember any from Voyager, but from Deep Space Nine, I strongly recommend the two-parter “Past Tense.” I may just love it because I’m such a junkie for time travel stories (you would not imagine how deep I am in Doctor Who right now), but I really think it has a strong story, and it more closely relates to Earth by portraying a more immediate future than the one we usually see. The episode “Trials and Tribble-ations,” in which the Deep Space Nine characters go back in time to “The Trouble With Tribbles,” is also great, if you don’t mind getting a different perspective on the original episode.

But I can agree with others that you’ll probably enjoy Enterprise a lot. Enterprise has a large faction of people that hate it, a large faction that love it, and a large faction that are too scared to say either way, or even have an opinion in the first place. I haven’t actually seen that much of it but the two-parter (why yes I do love two-parters) “In A Mirror, Darkly” is my favorite of what I’ve seen. It’s a continuation of the mirror universe of “Mirror, Mirror,” and it really is well done. It’s always fantastically fun to see characters, even ones you’re not familiar with, just be remorselessly evil. I’d also recommend “Impulse” if you’re a fan of the zombie genre, since that’s basically what’s in it.

@zachwulf2 Okay, I see what you are saying. Perhaps we should all suggest she watches the pilots of each series and see what hooks her?

I don’t know why so many people are against enterprise. I have watched each and every episode of all star trek series, as well as all of the films. My absolute favourite is enterprise and I was sick when it was cancelled after season 4. It just felt more real than all the others to me. I grew up with the original series, but it’s so hammy nowadays. TNG was fabulous, DS9 was good as of the 4th series, before that there was too much talk, religion and claustrophobia. Having Worf join up was a clever move. Voyager was another of my favourites, as I liked the crew. You could relate to them, just as you can relate to Archer’s crew on enterprise. Phlox was pure genius, as was the holodoc on Voyager. Sex-wise, there are only two outstanding figures (from a male point of view): sevenofnine on Voyager and of course T’Pol on enterprise. If enterprise would have received another few seasons, it would have made sex in the city look tame. I agree with some of the others here: start with all of enterprise, watch a couple of the original series stuff, primarily the movies, then all of TNG, then the first episodes of DS9, skip a couple of seasons and watch the rest as of Worf’s return, then watch all of Voyager – and of course all of the movies featuring Picard’s crew. Should take you about a year, but it’s well worth it!